What colors are safe to use for a website?
What is SpyWare & why should I be concerned?
How are backups (maintenance of servers) handled?
What Anti-Hacking & Anti-Virus Controls do you use to protect my data?
What is your Spam policy?

What colors are safe to use for a website?

Check our Color Chart for Webpage Development.

What is SpyWare & why should I be concerned?

Recently, a colleague of ours suggested downloading a little program called SpyBot, a program that looks for 'Spyware' (see below). I thought, with all the firewall and anti-virus protection that we run, surely there were not any unauthorized software running on our computers, but to humor my colleague, I decided to spend a few minutes and see what SpyBot found. I was dumbfounded. My main workstation had dozens of little spyware programs (bots) running on it. I cleaned up that machine and decided to test my laptop. Same thing, dozens of bots running. So what is spyware and why don't you want bots running on your system, read on...

Internet Connection Misuse & Abuse

For many years, the big problem has been software viruses written by malicious hackers finding their way into our personal computers to set up shop with their own agendas. But today we face a new and even more insidious threat:

Internet companies, whose apparent "business model" is the exploitation of consumer trust and lack of knowledge, are sneaking their spyware systems into our machines for their own purposes.

What is Spyware?

Spyware is ANY SOFTWARE which employs a user's Internet connection in the background (the so-called "backchannel") without their knowledge or explicit permission.

In my opinion, silent background use of an Internet "backchannel" connection MUST BE PRECEDED by a complete and truthful disclosure of proposed backchannel usage, followed by the receipt of explicit, informed, consent for such use. ANY SOFTWARE communicating across the Internet absent these elements is guilty of information theft and is properly and rightfully termed: Spyware.

Microsoft's own Windows Update site has fallen into suspicion of late. The site use to pop up a screen stating that the update process checked what updates were required 'without sending any data to Microsoft'. Now the system states 'Note Windows Update does not collect any form of personally identifiable information from your computer.' They do now collect computer specific information like cpu, memory, etc. While this may not bother people who trust Microsoft, many companies out there are not, might we say, as thoughtful as Microsoft. Many web sites try to load bots on your system to track your web viewing habits. There have been bots found that actually send everything you do on the internet back to the home site.

I got curious and wondered 'How prevelent are these spyware bots?' So I did a Goggle search for 'spy ware', and was surprised to find hundreds of free programs for creating these spy bots.

While some spyware may have a purpose, (such as parents checking on what children have been doing on the net, to employers doing the same to employees), in these instances, the owner of the computers know that the machine is being spied on. When spyware is loaded on your computer from a web site, and you don't know it is there, that is the problem.

Below are several links on the web to find out more about Spaware and how to deal with it (we don't indorse any of the following links, they are provided for informational purposes only):

http://beam.to/spybotsd -SpyBot software - A free tool to find out if there is spyware running on your computer and getting rid of it.

http://grc.com/optout.htm -Gibson Reasearch Optout program - Lots of info on spyware and several tools to deal with it.

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ - Lavasoft - provide several spyware avoidance programs.

Or just go to Google and search for 'stop spyware'.

(^)

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How are backups (maintenance of servers) handled?

Every evening we backup all client data. This gives us a snapshot of the current state of customer's websites, databases & email, every 24 hours.

Occassionally, depending on software updates, we mirror every hard disk in the system to make sure we have a basic setup of all systems. In the event of hardware failure or other system problems, we can use the backup to update the mirrored drives to current operating state, in a quick & timely manner. This multi-level backup stategy guarantees the integrity of client data & to minimize downtime.

Special note to webmasters: Please keep a copy of your web site and any changes made to them on your local machine. This way, if we have to resort to a backup, you will be able to restore any recent changes without having to recreate work.

In the event that we have to restore to a backup, we will email the contacts of all those possibly effected so you will know if you need to re-load recent updates. If you are not on our email lists for these announcements, please request to be added by .

(^)

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What Anti-Hacking & Anti-Virus Controls do you use to protect my data?

All JTM MultiMedia, Inc.'s servers are protected against hacking attempts via firewalls. We have set our firewalls as strict as possible to protect our client's information. We also do traffic sniffing to determine how secure our servers are. As with everything in the computer world, we cannot be sure we are 100% secure, as new threats come out daily, but we do have in place the latest anti-hacking technologies available today.

JTM MultiMedia, Inc. also maintains anti-virus software on all servers/computers at our facilities. We do daily virus definition updates and run complete virus scans on all drives. This does not mean that a virus can't get through our defenses. Many email viruses are enclosed in attachments that can only be detected if the document is opened. In these cases, our anti-virus software cannot detect the virus. This means that you still need to run current anti-virus software on your computers to be safe. Also, remember, don't open that attachment unless you know for sure what it is and who sent it.

(^)

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What is your Spam policy?

Any client of JTM MultiMedia, Inc. found to be sending unsolicited emails may be removed from our email/web servers with no compensation for previous payment of services. This will be determined on a case by case basis, and the final decision will be made by JTM MultiMedia, Inc.'s personnel.

(^)

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